


got nothing to hold onto

by saysthemagpie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Harry doesn't know, Heartbreak, M/M, Prostitution, Rentboys, niall's a prostitute, sad boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 04:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saysthemagpie/pseuds/saysthemagpie
Summary: niall can't afford this anymore. rentboy AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> revised/expanded version of a tumblr prompt fill. usual warnings for like.. rentboy trope angst/probably deeply unrealistic depictions of sex work etc etc. it's all fic.

Niall always leaves before Harry wakes up, slipping out from under the duvet and tiptoeing from the bedroom, clothes in his arms. It’s a real effort, every time. Harry’s so warm, naked and sleepy beside him, and his flat’s warm too, all that glorious heat. At half four on a Sunday, the last thing Niall wants to do is pull on his one good pair of jeans, take his worn jacket off the radiator, and step out into a bleak London morning.

But there are rules. Even if they’re arbitrary, even if he’s making shit up as he goes, trying to keep his head above water. No staying the night: that’s one. No letting Harry come round to his, because Louis’ made it clear he doesn’t approve and besides, Niall doesn't want Harry seeing the bed he still shares with Louis, the duvet he crawls under when he needs to shut his head down for a bit after a job.

No letting Harry pay for things, either, even if that means nursing the same pint for hours in the pub where Harry works on Saturday nights. That bit’s sort of nice, actually. Niall likes sitting at the end of the bar all night watching Harry charm the clientele. Harry’s dead clumsy, trips over his own feet a lot and spills drinks down his front more often than not. But every time he does he looks down the bar at Niall and gives him a sheepish grin, like it’s some kind of private joke between them.

Nobody tries to touch Niall while he’s there, or rough him up, or look him up and down and ask him how much, leering. For a few hours he’s not a whore-for-hire, he's just Harry’s mate: another kid at uni, maybe, or a wannabe musician, burning through his rich parents’ money as he waits for the big break that isn't coming.

And afterwards, once Harry’s shift ends - that’s nice, too. When they walk back to Harry’s flat together, bumping shoulders, Harry rambling on in that slow confused drawl of his. When Harry presses him up against the front door and licks his way into Niall’s mouth, rakes his nails up under his jumper, along the curve of his spine. It makes Niall shudder a little. Makes him feel hot all over, flushed and a little scared. 

Not scared of Harry, of course. Harry who’s so gentle with him, who spreads Niall out beneath him in his narrow bed like he can’t believe he gets to touch him. What scares Niall is knowing that this thing they’re doing can’t last, and wondering how badly it’s going to end. Sooner or later Harry’s going to find out that Niall has sex for money. Or - or Niall’s going to have to tell him. It doesn't really matter how it happens. Either way Harry won’t want to touch him again, once he knows the truth. Probably he won’t want to see him at all. 

Niall gets that, though it makes him feel sick. He’s always known that Harry’s got a real life, real dreams. He’s got his course half finished and a band that’s really going somewhere, and, if the girls at the pub are any indication, he's got no shortage of people willing to warm his bed when Niall’s gone. 

The danger is that Niall will forget all that. That he’ll get lost in the way Harry kisses, in the softness and the taste of that impossible mouth. That he’ll mistake the slow careful way Harry fingers him open, making him ready for his cock, for something it isn’t, something it couldn’t be. Niall can't risk forgetting who they are, the both of them together.

Boys like Harry don't have to settle for the likes of him. Boys like Harry meet nice girls in coffee shops, later on, and they marry them, move just outside of the city to a house with a little garden and a gate that latches. 

Boys like Niall - well. They work till they can't. Till they make a wrong choice, go home with the wrong guy, get picked up outside the wrong club, and that's it. Sometimes it feels like there’s a clock ticking in the back of Niall’s head, counting down the seconds till the bad thing comes. 

He knows it will, sure as anything. It's just that sometimes when Harry kisses him like that, laughs right into his mouth - when he puts Niall on his belly with a pillow under his hips and fucks him like that, nice and slow and deep, too warm too much too _good_ \- Niall almost forgets. 

So: rules. Rules like talismans, clenched in his fists, like a wood splint between his teeth. Rules to forestall the future, or at least to mitigate the damage.

*

The morning after Harry says _I love you_ for the first time, whispers it in his ear like a secret, Niall leaves earlier than usual, half an hour after Harry falls asleep. He gets dressed in the kitchen, lacing up his battered boots and winding a scarf round his neck. In the end he doesn’t leave a note. Instead he unlocks Harry’s phone and deletes his own number - a hollow gesture, since he hasn’t bought credit for his phone in months, couldn’t answer even if Harry tried to ring.

And he will try, Niall thinks. Sweet, bewildered Harry. For a couple days, he’ll go to the old places, ask around with that wide-eyed hurt look in his eyes till someone tells him to shove off and mind his own business. A week, maybe. Two on the outside.

Then he’ll give up, move on.

The world will fall back into place. Harry’s life on one end, and on the other: Niall in his cramped, freezing little room with Louis. Niall on a street corner somewhere, slouched against a lamppost waiting to be wanted. Niall on his hands and knees in a stranger’s motel room, his mind a perfect blank.

It’s not a real life, what he’s got. Not like Harry’s. But it’s not nothing, either. It’s his, same way the rules are his. Cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

The sky’s dark but clear when he lets himself out of the flat. It lightens gradually above him as he trudges home, shoulders hunched against the cold. Walking wakes him up a little, out there in the chill and the quiet, listening to the city waking up slowly around him. Saves him the fare he hasn’t got, not since he started spending his Saturday nights in Harry’s bed instead of in the backseat of some bloke’s car, or on his knees in an alleyway somewhere, his jeans shoved down around his thighs, arse slick and ready, just a hole for someone to use and fill. Just a mouth to moan when it's supposed to, a throat to choke out the words someone wants to hear. _Fuck, yeah. So big. Make me._

Niall lets himself in the busted door to the lobby. He trudges up the four flights of stairs and lets himself in. There's another key on his ring: Harry's. Niall wonders if he'll change the locks, when he figures out for good Niall's not coming back. Wonders if Harry will starting looking around his flat a little more carefully, cataloguing up his possessions. Harry doesn't know what Niall does for a living but there's no way he's missed the fact that when it comes down to it, Niall's not the _right kind_. He's trash, same way Louis' trash, compared to the posh world Harry comes from. He wouldn't blame Harry for thinking it, just for a moment: thief. Not a long way down from there to whore. 

Louis’ asleep in their narrow bed, burrowed under the duvet. Niall doesn’t bother taking his clothes off - the air’s frosty enough to see his breath, heat must be out again - just toes off his shoes and crawls under the heap of blankets, instinctively seeking out the warm body at their heart.

“Cold feet,” Louis mumbles, rolling over to face the wall. But he lets Niall curl up behind him anyway, pulls Niall's arm over his stomach so he can cuddle him properly. “You’re back late.”

“Working,” Niall says shortly.

Louis’ quiet for long enough Niall thinks he must’ve fallen back asleep. He’s still way too wound up to do the same, even when he closes his eyes and tries to do the slow, deep breathing thing Harry taught him last week.

“You tell him yet?”

The sound of Louis’ voice startles him out of his reverie. “What?” he says, opening his eyes.

“That bloke." Louis turns over onto his side to look at him. “It’s him, innit, with the stupid hair. That’s the one you’ve been staying over with all this month.”

“I didn’t stay over,” Niall says, then adds quickly, “And I’m not - I was working, I told you.”

"He pay you?" Louis says, raising an eyebrow. "Well, cough it up, then. You know it's almost the first, yeah? And we can’t miss it again, not after last month. If they boot us it’ll have to be the shelter.”

Niall feels something twist in his stomach at the thought. He’s got - memories of the shelter. Things he’s never told Louis, or anybody. He'll freeze to death before he steps foot in there again.

“I’ll have me half,” he says. He doesn’t know how, exactly, when he can’t scrounge up two quid for bus fare, but he’ll figure it out. One of his regulars’ll come through, or - or he’ll call Ben, see if that offer about being filmed is still on the table. He could make a couple hundred quid that way, jacking off he hopes, or maybe letting someone else do him. What does it matter if they put it up on the Internet. What does it matter knowing people will be looking at him, watching him get down on his knees and earn his rent money, same way he does every week. It's not like his mum’s ever going to go looking for it. Not like he's going to stand for Parliament someday. 

“You can’t keep giving up Saturdays,” Louis presses. “You have to tell him that. Either he’s got to pay or - ”

“It’s over,” he says sharply. Louis quiets. “Happy now? I finished with him, and I’ll - I’ll work twice as much this week to make up for it, so I can have the stupid money. No more Saturdays.” His voice sounds funny to his own ears, tight and forced.

Louis watches him for a moment, blue eyes wide, lashes dark. “Okay,” he says finally, breathing out. “That’s - it’s good, Nialler. It’s a good thing, trust me. S' too fucking messy.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Niall says. “Let’s just sleep, okay?”

Louis must be tired enough not to push it. Instead he just rolls over and lets Niall scoot up against his back again, tangling their legs together. His fingers curl around Niall’s in the dark, squeezing once before he lets go. 

Niall doesn’t respond, just nuzzles into Louis’ neck and breathes him in. He's here, in bed with Louis and everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be different now, or the same as it used to be, before Harry. He'll make rent, and then he'll make it the same way again, and he won't let himself think about anything else: Harry's mouth or his laugh. He won't think about a little yellow house outside the city with a bit of real garden, a white-painted gate to keep the dark at bay. 

He ought to start now, with the not-thinking, but when he closes his eyes it's all he sees: Harry halfway across London, waking up to an empty bed. Harry sitting up in his nest of blankets, soft and sleep-rumpled. Harry in his tiny student kitchen, stumbling around in his briefs trying to cook something decent on that cramped little stove. Harry who isn't his anymore, who wasn't ever, facing the day alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I post drabbles, WIPs, etc at my fic blog [here](http://www.saysthemagpie.tumblr.com)!


End file.
